Hey guys! I've worked really hard on this chapter and would really appreciate if you reviewed it. I tried really hard to capture Mike's real feelings for Emily but at the same time I didn't want it to be too mushy. If you could tell me what your favorite line was or even a lime you didn't like so I can know what works and doesn't work, I would be really grateful. Don't be afraid to criticize. It can only lead to improvement. Thank you so much for your continued support and for sticking with my story thus far! You guys are part of the reason that I love writing so much.

I had been asleep. That had become painstakingly obvious to me now. All my life, I had just been sleeping. Trapped in my little world of videogames, pizza jokes and friends, waiting for someone like her to come along and wake me. And then she came. And when she kissed me, the world exploded into life.

It was like a rude awakening from a pleasant dream, the feeling I get when a Nighlock alarm blares in the early hours of the morning. It was an icy slap back into reality, a reality where Emily was the only thing that mattered to me. A reality where I would have gladly thrown myself into the Netherworld to protect her, without knowing why.

It was like a fire had been ignited in my chest. One that threatened to consume us both from the inside out. Dimly I heard my heart screaming at me, furious at all of the torture that I was subjecting it to. But for the first time since I had been hit, I ignored the pain in my chest. I was too focused on the kiss.

Well more accurately, I was focusing on not killing her throughout the course of the kiss. I knew it was her first, so I tried my hardest to make it gentle. But so far, that wasn't really working for me. It was like I was a starving lion and she was a meek little lamb that was unfortunate enough to fall into my grasp.

Every muscle in my body tensed when she kissed me. My subconscious mind had already decided that in order to protect her it would need to be the most awkward not passionate kiss in the history of the world. That didn't even last for five seconds.

Without warning, I let go. I wasn't in control of my body anymore. The hands that caressed her smooth skin and entwined themselves around her neck like the roots of a tree, needing her to keep me grounded, they weren't mine. The lips that grabbed at hers so desperately, two little leaves starving for love and water, the tears that dripped from her face to mine. And most all, the heart that raced wildly inside of me; that wasn't mine either. Mine was always strong and steady. It didn't behave like this. I didn't behave like this.

It was like some horrible dream or some perfect nightmare. Watching myself be trapped in her grasp unable to free myself, loving it and hating it at the same time. A little voice of reason in the back of my head (that sounded remarkably like Kevin) kept screaming Get off her you idiot! What the hell are you doing?! You're going to kill the both of you, and for what? One little kiss?

But that was the thing. It wasn't just one little kiss. It was so much more than that. I had done many stupid things in my life that I had ultimately wound up hating myself for. Endangering my friends, my fellow rangers, Emily, but this was uncontested that most horrible most wonderful mistake that I had ever made. And Kevin could scream in the back of my head all that he wanted, but in the end passion won out. And with it, the monster inside of me had won out.

So I was stuck. Pushing her away and pulling her closer. Hating her so much yet needing her so badly. Wanting her to never leave but to get as far away form me as possible. My insides were torn in two by this one little kiss. I was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

It was a videogame with an unbeatable level. It was like getting caught between a rock and a hard place. Either way you went, you were inevitably going to get crushed. It was like choosing between two unfortunate and painful deaths. Faintly, I remembered one of my friends asking me once Would you rather freeze to death or be burned alive?

I had chosen to freeze to death. Because it would feel just like falling asleep, the world fading around me, my life no longer mattering and sinking into peaceful oblivion. But by kissing her, I had chosen to burn alive. Because that is what she was doing to me. She was setting me on fire. Scorching flaming blistering fire. And I was painfully awake. Awake to watch the world unravel around me. Awake to watch everything I knew about myself be turned upside down.

Because, as stupid as I know I am, I never thought that I was a bad person. I wasn't selfish, I wasn't cruel, and I would do anything to protect those that I cared about. But right now, I was being all of these things. I was being selfish to Emily, confusing her like this when the sad and horrible truth was that we could never be together. I was being cruel to her, and myself, by doing this to her, comforting her like I could protect her when in reality I couldn't even protect myself.

No matter how much I loved her, it didn't matter. We wouldn't work. Our entire relationship, just like our entire kiss was a carefully calculated math problem. Me + Emily + too little passion = a boring relationship. Me + Emily + too much passion = Dead Emily. Sooner or later I would screw up. I would miscalculate. I would overestimate my ability to control myself around and I would find myself gazing into unseeing accusing big brown eyes and golden yellow soaked in red.

I would hurt her. I would hurt her. I would hurt her. It was only a matter of time. All this ran through my mind like lightning the entire kiss. Everything her lips touched mine a jolt of electricity coursed through my body, making me grit my teeth with concentration, my hair stand on edge and my heart shocked into beating. It might have been the only thing keeping me alive.

But it was a tortured existence. More than once, I grimly thought to myself that it might have been for the best if she just let me go. If she let me die and slowly freeze to death. If she let my heart harden into stone, made heavy with all of my misery. But she wouldn't let me free. The kisses kept coming hot coals thrown at me repeatedly, bruising my lips and heart with their white-hot intensity.

In short, it was the best kiss of my life.

Okay guys! What did you think? Please review. Here's the synopsis of next chapter…

Now that Mike and Emily have kissed, Emily is convinced that Mike is healing. But the truth is, Mike is more unstable than ever. It only takes one little thing… or one little person to set him over the edge. And how will Emily be able to help him when she refuses to come to terms with how he feels about her, or how she feels about him…